The Fitchburg Common Council will vote Tuesday whether to amend the city’s operating budget to implement a real-time information center (RTIC) through a $1.8 million contract with Axon that would supply the police department with new body-worn cameras, drones, automated license plate readers (ALPR) and other technology to aid in evidence-gathering, reconnaissance and surveillance.
The proposed contract comes with a discount of more than $710,000 if approved before December 1.
Police Department officials told Madison365 that the technology is needed to support an understaffed department charged with policing one of Wisconsin’s fastest-growing cities. They also said the Axon system has more safeguards for privacy than the more well-known Flock system, which the city abandoned last year.
Critics said the Axon system still raises privacy concerns and the deadline discount amounts to “high pressure sales techniques,” and said the community has not been adequately engaged in the process.
In an advisory vote last week, the city’s Community Equity Advisory Committee recommended the Common Council reject the proposal, but provided a list of recommendations as the council continues to consider the contract.
Capt. Andrew McCarthy of the Fitchburg Police Department said the department’s staffing has not kept up with the city’s population growth.
“Every metric we have says we should have 67 sworn bodies. We have 54,” McCarthy said. “That’s a 20 percent disparity that we’re not getting. And every year it gets worse.”
“This is coming from a place of necessity, not luxury,” he said. “Even if we were fully staffed and had the bodies we needed, this would be great to have. For us, with the deficit [in] the bodies, this is much more of a need to have.”
The real-time information center would be built through two contracts. The Axon contract totals $1,824,050.53 over seven years, from April 2027 through March 2034, and must be signed by Dec. 1 for the city to get the discounted price. A separate seven-year contract with Peregrine, at roughly $50,000 a year, would provide data analytics software linking the city’s dispatch, records and evidence systems. The department is already running a paid six-month trial of Peregrine.
In the first year, Axon would supply 28 Tasers; Fusus, Axon’s real-time crime center software, licensed for up to 175 video streams from public and private cameras; a drone dock for a “drone as first responder” program; an indoor drone; and four solar-powered license plate reader cameras. In 2029, the contract adds 60 body cameras with live translation, in-car cameras for 17 squad cars, two more drone docks and an artificial intelligence tool for searching evidence. Axon’s proposal says the 2029 items can be moved up, delayed or removed at no cost before they ship.
The resolution puts first-year costs for both contracts at $224,480, rising to about $357,000 a year beginning in 2029. The city would cover the cost with money left over from existing body camera and Taser projects, a $150,000 donation from the Fitchburg Law Enforcement Foundation, an $11,144 federal Justice Assistance Grant and $160,000 a year in tax levy that the mayor’s proposed 2027 budget had set aside for a new police officer position. Redirecting that position’s funding requires a separate amendment to the 2027 budget. Both contracts depend on the city receiving the foundation’s donation.
Because the resolution changes the city’s total revenues and expenditures, it needs a two-thirds vote of the full council to pass. The council meets at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10.
McCarthy said the department does not have a backup plan if the council rejects it.
“If this were to not pass … we’d have to go back to [the] drawing board, and we’re really struggling to find out what to do next, short of reducing additional services to the city, which we don’t want to do,” he said.
He added that the technology would not replace officers’ judgment. “I’m not relying on technology to make all the decisions,” he said.
Mayor Julia Arata-Fratta, who sponsored the resolution, said supporting the department is part of her job.
“My role as a mayor is to provide my police department the tools and resources and the training so they can be efficient and they can do a good job with our residents,” Arata-Fratta said.
“I am very confident in my police department that … this technology will be used responsibly with a strict limit on access, clear policies, and an ongoing oversight,” she said. “For me, the most important thing is protecting public safety and respecting our individual freedoms.”
She said the city does not plan to blanket residential areas with cameras or watch them around the clock.
“We are not going to install this camera in residential [neighborhoods]. We are not going to have a police officer looking at this camera [24/7],” she said.
Ald. Jake Lepper said he sees the system as a way to stretch the department’s resources and to serve residents who don’t speak English.
“I see this as another tool for improving the police department’s ability to work with the resources that they have more efficiently,” Lepper said. “I also see it as an equity tool in that the body cameras that they would adopt have a live translation service.”
Lepper said Axon is not Flock.
“We as the city terminated the Flock contract because we did not think that that company was using the data correctly or in accordance with the values that Fitchburg has, so I think Axon has demonstrated that they’re different,” he said.
Lepper, who is a police officer with the University of Wisconsin Police Department, said his support is not unconditional.
“Even though I am a police officer, I think I’m probably one of the first people to be critical of police overreach,” he said. “This is not the council giving the police department [a] tabula rasa to do whatever they want with this technology.”
Both rejected the idea that the proposal is being rushed. “We are a very transparent municipality,” Arata-Fratta said. “I understand people feel that they’ve been rushed, but we have been discussing it for a year.”
“We’re not going to have a big advertising blitz and spend money on that,” Lepper said. “But … it’s not like this is a secret.”
Arata-Fratta said she is adamant that the system not be used to help federal immigration enforcement.
“I don’t want this information to be shared with ICE or Homeland [Security],” she said.
McCarthy said that wouldn’t even require a change to current practice.
“We don’t do proactive civil immigration enforcement, and we don’t provide information to those that do,” he said.
Draft changes to the department’s license plate reader policy provided to Madison365 would put that in writing. The draft policy would bar the department from using license plate reader data, or sharing it with federal agencies, for immigration enforcement, and removes “homeland security” from the list of allowed secondary uses of the data. It would also require audits of the system every six months, and limit outside agencies with access to the department’s own settings and access controls. An agency whose user gets around, or tries to get around, those controls could have its access suspended or ended immediately.
Other parts of the license plate reader policy would not change. Officers do not need reasonable suspicion or probable cause to use the system, the data may be shared with other law enforcement agencies for legitimate purposes, and the data is not open to public review.
But McCarthy said data would not be shared with other police departments, at least at the beginning.
Draft changes to the drone policy would bar drones from monitoring or recording people at lawful protests, demonstrations, marches, religious gatherings and other First Amendment-protected activity solely because they are taking part. The draft also creates the “drones as first responder” program, which would allow drones to be sent to priority calls before officers arrive, subject to the warrant requirements in state law. Existing policy already bars random surveillance, targeting people based on protected characteristics and arming drones, and requires a warrant or emergency circumstances to record places where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
According to a cover note from McCarthy sent to the council with the draft policies, the draft changes would be published once the RTIC is approved. The department also plans a public dashboard on its data and technology, modeled on one used by police in Minnetonka, Minn.
The department’s existing immigration policy, which a department overview says applies to all of its technology, says Fitchburg will not enter a 287(g) agreement with federal immigration authorities and that officers should not detain anyone for civil immigration violations. The policy does allow officers to help federal immigration officials when there is a safety concern, such as suspected terrorism, an arrest for a violent felony or a previously deported felon.
McCarthy said Axon itself cannot see the city’s data.
“Axon itself does not have access to our data. The way I like to describe it, it’s kind of like a safety deposit box at the bank,” he said. “The bank’s holding it for you, but until you come there with your key, … they can’t look and see that box without your key.”
“We don’t use any sort of facial recognition technology,” he added.
Ald. Joe Maldonado said he opposes the proposal.
“I’m not in favor of the expansion of a surveillance state,” Maldonado said. “Having cameras that can monitor anybody as they pass create[s] some huge civil liberty issues, and I’m generally opposed to the automatic license plate readers.”
Maldonado said switching from Flock to Axon does not resolve his concerns.
“These companies have information in the cloud, so we don’t own that data,” he said. “These companies have a history of collaboration with federal law enforcement, and they’re part of a larger system. … Flock was a little bit more blatant, but Axon, Motorola all have some ties that I find incredibly problematic to the military, to AI, and to federal law enforcement.”
He also objected to the Dec. 1 deadline.
“Axon is using a high-pressure sales technique in order to influence public policy, … and I don’t believe that we should be [bowing] to that type of pressure, especially for an amount that large,” Maldonado said.
“I don’t feel presentations from companies and law enforcement departments are enough,” he said. “There needs to be an actual … neutral analysis of this.”
Peguero, the equity committee chair, said the process moved too fast. “It felt like this was being pushed through really quickly through a budget process,” he said.
He said residents who weighed in raised concerns about “civil liberties and the inability to consent on who is being surveilled, regardless of whether you have committed a crime or not.”
“We did not receive any public comment that was supportive of the current proposal,” he said.
Peguero suggested the city could take a slower approach. “Maybe we don’t adopt the whole system right away, especially the … license plate reader piece because there are concerns primarily there,” he said.
“We are a safe city, and for me, that question of safety … is dependent on who you ask,” Peguero said.
